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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25850791">your sky all hung with jewels</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/s0dafucker/pseuds/s0dafucker'>s0dafucker</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>My Chemical Romance</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - The Magnus Archives Fusion, Body Horror, M/M, Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge Era, and desolation!frank, eye!mikey, ft web!gerard</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-08-16</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-08-16</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-18 00:27:52</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>5,412</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25850791</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/s0dafucker/pseuds/s0dafucker</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p><i>in starlit nights i saw you</i><br/><br/>frank’s ink-dark fingers reach, like adam and god, and he lifts mikey’s glasses up before he can object- he sits still, lets him assess in the orange-bright light of his cigarette and the flat glow of his eyes and the suffocating moth-heavy fluorescents.<br/><br/><i>so cruelly you kissed me</i></p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Frank Iero/Mikey Way</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>3</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>11</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>your sky all hung with jewels</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>
  <i>god makes more sense this way. when blood flows from the neck, the body looks like an uncorked bottle</i>
  <br/>
  <i>but maybe this leaves more room for salvation. the less of me, the less of sin.</i>
  <br/>
  <br/>
  <br/>
  <i>- self portrait as headless john the baptist hitchhiking, c.t. salazar</i>
</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>no one asks about the spiders on the bus. mikey catches frank burning one, after a show, and there’s a long moment of uncertain silence- but they don’t really talk about it. </p><p>no one asks about the spiders, and mikey Knows it’s because they don’t feel their strings being pulled every time one of the things scuttles out of the corner in the bathroom, off to shoplift drugstore makeup or whatever gerard uses them for. </p><p>(if he really looks he can See the threads ‘round gerard’s fingers, white silk draped over him and stretching out in all directions, shimmering, ready to push and pull at his whim.)</p><p>they’ve got too many eyes between them, sitting out on a hotel balcony and watching, looking, Seeing, gerard with the flat, glossy set high on his cheekbones, looking elegant on his girl’s-face- they blink, eyelashes long, moonlight catching in the endless black pools. gerard crooks his index finger and the wolf spider on the railing twitches, seizes, and drops to the ground to run over the toe of mikey’s converse. his spider-eyes blink, twice, almost coy, and when mikey reaches out with his Sight it’s a warm rush of <em> thinkingofyoumissingyouhopeyourealright, </em>and mikey can feel the tug of a thread tied to his wrist, a tether. the glass door slides open and gerard turns his head, the sharp line of his nose in silhouette. </p><p>it’s frank, all mussed hair and cigarette dangling from his inked-up fingers, eyes half-asleep. mikey pries, gently, and finds warmth- the glow of trust and of exhaustion. it radiates out and slips indelicately under mikey’s skin. claustrophobic, it should be, but it’s clumsy and comfortable one layer deep, sitting inside him, underneath like the ink of a tattoo. </p><p>gerard blinks with all of his eyes and frank squints, in this light-polluted perversion of darkness, and there's a moment of pin-drop quiet before he mutters, ‘i hate the fuckin' eye,’ with something that isn’t quite shock, isn't quite reverence but is shiny-new in his mouth all the same. mikey Looks and mikey sees the wax-drip of his skin and mikey says, ‘fuck off,’ under his breath. </p><p>gerard huffs. ‘did you really not know?’</p><p>frank lifts his thumb to the end of his smoke. ‘course not,’ he says with the corner of his mouth. mikey Sees the flash of his eyes when they move, searchlights catching mikey in the other chair, pupils big enough to drown in. the wine-dark sea. mikey gets a fleeting image of a kiss pressed hot and wet to the stretch of neck below frank’s jaw and he isn’t sure who it belongs to.  </p><p>frank’s ink-dark fingers reach, like adam and god, and he lifts mikey’s glasses up before he can object- he sits still, lets him assess in the orange-bright light of his cigarette and the flat glow of his eyes and the suffocating moth-heavy fluorescents. </p><p>(‘your eyes.’)</p><p>(gerard leans in ‘til their noses are almost touching, ‘til mikey can see the dust caught in his eyelashes, and he asks, ‘what happened to them?’ but gerard just stares, every pore in his face hyperreal.)</p><p>frank scowls from on high, cast in shadow and below-light and back-light that carves his face out like a jack-o-lantern, grotesque and baroque. one of caravaggio’s blood-stained saints. there’s a theory among scholars that baroque came from <em> barroco, </em>in portuguese. ‘a flawed pearl,’ mikey murmurs aloud, and he didn’t know that before. frank’s mouth shifts somehow, and then mikey’s rationed his glasses again and the light is less gristly, less shadow-puppet cutting. frank’s frown comes into focus.</p><p>(‘and i sacrificed him to the mother,’ gerard murmurs, and it’s honey-thick and loving, like he’s praying. mikey supposes he must still be feeding- though he’s drinking in the story himself and the only thing he feels for the watcher is a distant camaraderie.)</p><p>(there’s a temple to it in england somewhere. he can feel it tug like a lighthouse through fog, a sweeter-tinged variety of the soft pull of gerard’s webs. doesn’t stir much <em> passion, </em>though.)</p><p>‘i met a beholding avatar once.’ frank exhales. ‘he was a preacher.’</p><p>mikey doesn’t need to Know to catch his drift. his tone is scorching enough. </p><p>(‘you owe me for those,’ says the girl with the wrong-colored eyes, and mikey stares down at the pavement. if he looks at her too long the watcher starts to weep, and it’s an uncomfortable enough feeling to force his gaze down to watch the ash drop from his stolen cigarette. they’re ditching church. he doesn’t know how to tell her that he can see the cracks in her skin.</p><p>‘i know,’ he murmurs. what was her name? what did she look like? it’s a big shitty game of rock-paper-scissors, that she can wear that face and he can’t peel it back. he Looks and still he doesn’t see.)</p><p>frank pulls him into the bathroom by his shirt, like they aren’t on a moving bus, like it isn’t a nice fucking shirt he’s gonna ruin with his always-scorching hands- </p><p>-mikey doesn’t Look but frank presses one palm against his cheek and mikey Sees his skin going wax-runny with the faintest effort and mikey isn’t afraid, somehow, mikey’s standing casual-loose and nicotine-shaking with his back against the wall that’s thin like keratin, like fingernails, thin like it’ll bend if mikey stops holding himself up, e-string tight- </p><p>frank holds the arms of mikey’s glasses when he kisses. like he’s scared they’ll break. </p><p>(this is still new. this will ruin the band if it ruins mikey. this isn’t as discreet as they think it is.) </p><p>(this is brimming with <em> affair </em> and <em> illicit </em>and tabloid suspicion, a looming expiration date, but it's drowning comfort anyway.)</p><p>frank is boiling hot and he takes mikey’s hair in his fist and mikey Hears <em> do you think it’s that easy to get rid of a wound to close the mouth of a wound </em>echoing in his head, tapedeck scratch repeat and wonders what the fuck would make him think of jean cocteau at a time like this. frank is boiling hot and mikey’s dumb-struck stupid with his heart thumping in his ears gunshot-loud, his heart pounding through every point of contact like fight-or-flight, and their teeth click together with a sound like porcelain-</p><p>-gerard’s skin like porcelain, his eyes dark and dead like a doll’s, the inky set of his grinning mouth-</p><p>-venom dripping from shining fangs-</p><p>‘i thought you hated spiders,’ mikey forces past his split lip, and frank fixes him with something between a grin and a glare. </p><p>‘quit snooping around up there if you don’t want to see shit you don’t like.’</p><p><em> who says i don’t like it </em> sits flat on mikey’s tongue like a bad trip waiting to happen. (it's a stupid back-burner urge to get frank pissed, to push it too-far, to lie and <em> yes-and </em> something that is already sizzling a bit too close to <em> uncomfortable </em> for mikey's taste. something combustible. <em> let's break up the band. let's break up </em>.) </p><p>‘i’m not snooping,’ is what he says instead.</p><p>‘bullshit.’ firing-squad-quick. the watcher reaches down mikey’s throat to lovingly tuck the knowledge of gary gilmore’s legacy into his stomach lining. he doesn’t appreciate it.</p><p>mikey’s mouth is full of frank’s half-offended indignation and it blisters, tastes like midsummer and burnt-out matches. tastes faintly like shame and mostly like annoyance. serves-you-right crawls halfway up to make itself heard but mikey swallows and it tastes like he’s smoked a cigarette too close to the filter. hot-hot-hot. let’s kiss, he whispers or thinks he does. i won’t do it again, he lies behind his teeth. </p><p>something about actions speaking louder and mikey’s hand locked around frank’s shirt collar and an olive branch and a shattered stained glass window. frank sees so much in the not-dark when his eyes are closed and to keep mikey from it- </p><p>it wouldn’t be fair. </p><p>(‘you have pretty eyes,’ says the guy with his hand in mikey’s back pocket, but all mikey can think about is how he played ophelia in his junior year production of hamlet and had a termite infestation in the attic above his room for eight months that same year. he kisses underneath mikey’s jaw and mikey asks, quietly, ‘do you know what i am?’)</p><p>(the answer was <em> yes </em> and the answer was <em> i don’t care </em> and the answer was <em> being consumed by love is as easy as falling asleep when you’ve been awake for days </em> and the answer was <em> you can stay the night. i won’t hurt you. </em>)</p><p>mikey wakes up in the middle of the night needing a smoke, with his glasses carving a groove into the bridge of his nose, with his hand dangling off his bunk and his shirt reeking of someone else. whose fucking shirt is this?</p><p>(a girl in the crowd had a zero shirt, last night- mikey’d Seen her as if with a spotlight, black-out flashlight beam, and he’d found worm, after the show, sent him after her. she’s got his unknown pleasures shirt.)</p><p>he smells it, feels weird and out-of-body for doing it, in the fake blue-black dark- and someone else’s memories take up residence in his head, someone else’s freezer-burnt heart, sickly sweet and aching like a fresh bruise. he can’t pin anything down, not really, no images or names or faces; just an alkaline taste in his throat and nostalgia that belongs outside of him. fuck. it hurts. </p><p>everyone smokes everywhere, who-cares, but mikey keeps to the bathroom or tries to- ray thinks it’s ‘cause he’s polite and it makes him a little guilty, makes him worry about staining the walls or something, but really mikey just likes the solitude. </p><p>he stands, tries to, still with the bridge of his nose so hot-stinging that it almost feels bloody, still with that barbed-wire heartache- he shoves it to the side and pretends it’s just the cigarette craving and tries to get his bearings on the stupid fucking bus and remember where he left his pack. ‘fuck,’ he whispers, and something about the way it sits in the air tells him someone else heard.</p><p>the web around his wrist tightens faintly.</p><p>he knocks on the bathroom door with the back of his knuckles, one-two- the thread tugs and frank mutters, ‘it’s open.’</p><p>fucking psychopaths, both of them, tangled up too-close, no room to breathe; it makes mikey claustrophobic, squeezing in with them, but he’s got no other fucking options when he’s already opened the door. (gerard’s sharp-toothed grin sits on the front of his skull.)</p><p><em> prayer </em>is what pricks at mikey’s senses first, blown-out candles and long-dead saints and baptism-drowning, shadow stretching out for miles, softening the boundaries between people and gods. </p><p>he eases the door shut behind him, tries not to feel like he’s creeping into someplace he doesn't belong, like he’s eavesdropping- <em> you aren’t intruding </em>says the curve of gerard’s wrist where his hand dips into frank’s hair. one of them’s got a cigarette, one orange-red point of light that flares up and casts everything in haunted-house contrast, like a highway memorial, one point of light to warp mikey’s eyes into something resembling tunnel vision. he reaches out and frank’s eyes flash like onyx, like flint or anthracite, turning his head to let mikey take the thing from his mouth himself.</p><p>he feels all at once the stifling heat of confession, in the hush, in the skin-to-skin he feels secondhand, like a voyeur- do they kiss? in the dark? or are mikey's eyes tricking him? he takes a drag and when the coal flares the light catches frank-and-gerard, golden, breathing the same air; <em> his eyes are like blazing fire, </em> frank murmurs where only mikey can hear, <em> and on his head are many crowns. he has a name written on him that no one knows but himself.  </em></p><p>it's revelation 19:12, mikey Knows that, but what frank means by it he has no fucking clue. </p><p>there's too-much inside mikey's skin, shit that doesn't belong there, hellfire in his blood, the phantom sensation of tattoo needles to his knuckles. he smokes and hopes it can do anything to settle him, the hackles raised by even being here, by slipping ghostlike into this graveyard, this sermon. gerard's wrist twists, his fingers closing, and mikey passes the cigarette over into his vague direction, the webs going taunt. </p><p><em> you could've asked, </em>mikey says to no one. </p><p>(mikey's stumbling-drunk, his phone buzzing faintly in his back pocket-</p><p>an arm reaches up around his shoulder and his heart stutters like a kick-drum, one-two, ice for blood, before the watcher thinks it timely to inform him it's just frank, his voice coming into the liminal space behind mikey's ear- his hot breath, his smoke-scented rasp- 'c'mon, we got a hotel.' </p><p>affection comes off him in exhausted waves, the heaviness of sleep finding its way into mikey's bones; <em> i can't carry you, </em> frank thinks, loud and deliberate, <em> so get out of my head.  </em></p><p>it takes effort, mikey can feel it, and the gesture's intimate enough to rattle around his stupid-dazed brain and push his mouth down into frank's neck, his shoulder, the familiar old crick in his spine flaring up and up and sparking into a curling warmth in his neck, in his throat, in his lips shoving wet and clumsy into frank's skin, some kind of gratitude. <em> get out of my head </em>but why would he, the twin sensations of their worn-out shoes dragging over the concrete, a mirror from the inside, a mirror from the outside, a concussion for a baptism, a baptism for foreplay, the strain of frank's arm in the socket reaching up to mikey's shoulders and the ache in mikey's back when he slumps down to make it stop, call-and-answer-</p><p>the hotel's got air conditioning and enough beds for frank to pry off his shoes and crawl under the too-white sheets and under mikey's skin with his goosebumps, under mikey's skin where he belongs, warm from the inside out, warm from the outside in when his hand rests wax-wet on top of mikey's chest and his heartbeat comes up through the pads of his fingers. mikey closes one fist and can feel the ghost of his uneven heart pounding in his fingerprints. </p><p>'get some sleep,' frank says, his chin somewhere around mikey's sternum or his clavicle where it hurts in that bone-to-bone way, 'we gotta drive tomorrow.')</p><p>mikey's Looking. he wishes he wasn't but he's falling asleep propped up between ray and gerard in a denny's-or-something, somewhere they've got to be careful with hoods and sunglasses and voices too loud and he wouldn't be prying at all if gerard would just fucking quit it.</p><p>
  <em> frank's voice crackling with tears like radio static gerard's fingers curling a strand of his hair, his skin sickly-pale, his skin nicotine stained, shakey zoom on his bitten nails like an old vhs, pupils dilating on his fucked-up hands like a camera lens, like it isn't real- is it real? </em>
</p><p>mikey's head snaps up and ray shifts to let him move, tossing him a concerned look that mikey fumbles and hands indelicately back in the form of taking a long sip of ray's coffee when he finds his own mug empty. he can feel frank trying to catch his eye; it burns in a way that isn't entirely unpleasant, though maybe that's just masochism- </p><p>frank kicks him in the shin, barely a second's fucking notice from the fear god of goddamn knowledge, just enough to keep him from cursing out loud and instead fit his lip between his teeth and meet frank's insistent gaze. </p><p>
  <em> you alright? </em>
</p><p>he thinks <em> fuck off </em> , groggy and bitter, before remembering to mouth <em> i'm fine.  </em></p><p>frank sets his face in that i-don't-believe-you grimace that means he doesn't want to argue and wraps his hands around his mug until it's steaming, pushes it across the table. the faint pulse of pain in mikey's leg feels like <em> i love you </em>and so does the hot ceramic and it feels kind of like vertigo when there's still conversation humming around him, when gerard's vhs-rewinding something in the shape of a breakup next to him. mikey stares at the webs in gerard's hands and tries to trace them back, like one of those kid's-menu games, like a puzzle, untangling with his eyes- </p><p>on impulse he reaches out for the one spanning frank's lip ring and gerard's thumb and is surprised-and-not to find it solid and silky between his fingers. cold and fine. he tugs, gently, and frank looks over; and the fresh bruise on mikey's shin aches, his chest aches, his heart is swollen and beating too-loud- frank smiles a little, crooked and small and secret, and the thread breaks unceremoniously in mikey's hand. </p><p>(gerard's lighting candles. mikey's examining his reflection in 8 pieces. </p><p>'why d'you still have it?' </p><p>gerard shrugs. 'it's one of the first things She did through me. i thought i'd keep it.' </p><p>mikey stares and wonders how it feels to love one's patron like this. like religion. </p><p>he supposes it's different for heirs. a spider scuttles over the dusty rosary and mikey thinks vaguely of setting fire to the creased-up paper crown in the center of it all. it's more sentimental than anything- god knows it wouldn't fit on either of their heads anymore- but maybe that's why mikey's twitchy impulse is to knock the candles over and let the thing burn. he's making gerard nervous, he can feel it, the bitter taste of questions behind his tongue, and in the end he overcompensates and mutters, 'i'll see you at dinner,' and hopes it comes off as something like aloof. </p><p>he cracks his knuckles as many times as he can before he bothers to check if that thing about arthritis is true, and when he Knows it's not he stares up at the ceiling and tries until his fingers ache.)</p><p>frank doesn't resemble a person all the way, not when he's naked, not when he's pressed into the coffin-space of mikey's bunk and mikey's fingers are inside him but not like that- like <em> sex </em> but not like <em> bodies </em> - not like <em> flesh </em>- </p><p>like mikey's sinking into him, knuckle-deep in the space where his heart would be, where his heart was once until frank decided he didn't like it and melted it down and now, if the watcher's pseudo-whisper is anything to go by, he keeps it nestled next to his hip where it's bracketed by bone and pulsing fire. mikey spits hot blood into frank's open mouth and mutters <em> keep your eyes closed </em> and hopes it's enough, hopes his body doesn't bleed through frank's eyelids like a sunspot, hopes and prays and bites into frank's jugular where his blood tastes of ash and boils softly. he crooks his fingers, searching up, losing himself in the feedback loop of sensation and frank's breathing, old mortal instinct keeping him panting with creaking, worn-out lungs, voice scratchy from a sold-out show when he says, <em> fuck, mikes, </em> barely audible over the blood roaring in his ears. <em> fuck. </em>mikey covers frank's eyes when they start to slip open, blinking with the promise of fresh tears; his fingers in frank's chest twist and pull and frank chokes on the shiver it sends up his trachea, gasps wet and wanting, nerves blazing and mikey's labored breathing above him the loudest thing in the entire world. </p><p>he can't make sense of himself and he won't, won't let the eye tell him <em> just what exactly </em>is warped and twisted and pulsing with light, directing with pinpoint precision the heavy feeling of being watched and being known to the body below him. mikey can feel frank's eyes moving in their sockets and his arms are aching with the bleeding memory of tattoo needles and exertion that could belong to either of them, guitar-strap bruise on their shoulders, muscles stretched to breaking, mikey's glasses lost somewhere in someone's jacket pocket so he doesn't have to worry about resting them on the nose and the ears and the eyes that he doesn't think would quite support them.</p><p>frank reaches up blindly and finds mikey's hip, his waist, the hem of his shirt- his mouth is dark and red and mikey stares at his tongue when he says, 'you can take it off. i won't look.'</p><p>mikey swallows with his throat scraped raw and mutters, 'i don't want the watcher seeing you. more than it already has.' </p><p>(the blinking eyes in his skin roll and twist uncomfortably, straining, but mikey swallows his nausea and lets the watcher weep while it breathes down his neck. this is selfish, greedy, a throbbing human <em> want </em>that isn't offered up as tribute to something larger and more holy. mikey doesn't give a shit.)</p><p>frank's fingertips singe through his shirt. </p><p>'shit,' he whispers, letting go of the scorch mark as quick as if it hurt. </p><p>(his face is burning under mikey's hand, steaming, and embarrassment that isn't his creeps up mikey's spine, something small and delicate and touched settling in his chest.)</p><p>(<em> that </em> is holy. frank is holy. his emotions in mikey's body are welcomed guests and they are more like religion than anything mikey has become.)</p><p>''s ok,' mikey says, and he strokes frank's eyelid with his thumb, just to feel the ghost of it, the secondhand sense of it; he wants to say something like <em> you're beautiful </em>but it's flat and uncomfortable in his mouth, would sit wrong in the dark, so he just leans down and kisses him again, that sizzling heat, that steaming epicenter of mortality. </p><p>(gerard is screaming and the crowd is screaming and mikey's pulse is thrumming wildly to the beat of <em> adoration, </em>a passion that is all-consuming in nature, a passion that is addictive, an addiction that is passion personified, passion personified is mikey's brother telling stories to ten thousand people with broken hearts, telling stories with his throat stinging like something bloody-</p><p>
  <em> an achilles tendon sliced open and bleeding starless nights, a switchblade wedding vow, a throat bared, the howl of feedback, ache and ache and spit up poison, stitch the wound, bleed the venom out-  </em>
</p><p>ray catches him shuffling offstage, drifts into his orbit and bumps his shoulder and shoots him a secret little smile, all hopped up on adrenaline. mikey tries not to lean his entire body on him, goes limp so the roadies can take his bass and push a condensation-wet bottle of water into his hand, lets ray sling an arm around him and enthuse about the show, about the song he's working on with gerard, something about dying, something about the riff that he explains in soft, love-warm detail, something about love that sinks into mikey's bone marrow and makes him feel two seconds from sleep.)</p><p>'you and frank,' mikey blurts out, when he shouldn't, when he's sitting on a bus couch with his legs tucked underneath him bent to aching, stinging points of pressure, gerard's eyes impossibly dark and startled across from him.</p><p>'me and frank,' he repeats dumbly, like he doesn't know, like mikey can't reach into his head and pluck out the <em> panicsharpnessoldwornbruises </em>feeling in his chest. his spider-eyes blink. his eyes don't.</p><p>tactless, mikey's always been tactless, playacting at knowing what to say and when to do it; gerard stares and slowly pulls a pack of cigarettes from his pocket like a peace offering.</p><p>(<em> i saw in his hand a long spear of gold, and at the iron's point there seemed to be a fire.  </em></p><p>frank's whispering out into the in-between, the dark sea that connects them, the rolling of the waves and the blacks of his eyes, <em> and to pierce at my very entrails; and when he drew it out he seemed to draw them all out also, and to leave me all on fire with a great love of God. the pain was so great-  </em></p><p>and mikey can feel it, in him, and he squirms with it, with frank's weight in his lap and frank's voice in his head and the fresh, gorey sensation of saint theresa's ecstasy.</p><p><em> and yet so surpassing was the sweetness of this excessive pain, that i could not wish to be rid of it. </em>)</p><p>mikey lights one and he pries, he reaches in and tangles his fingers in gerard's webs and tries to sift through them, finds the whole process surprisingly agreeable- he centers his eyes in his head and watches gerard watch him back, feels fumbling and stupid and still he plunges his fingers into the spider's-web and searches blindly for answers.</p><p>(frank's looking at you. </p><p>you're sitting in the back of the van, folded up into the corners on top of everyone's hoodies and old shirts and shitty half-finished merch and he's reaching over to light your cigarette with his calloused little inked-up fingers, the tip of his fingernail glowing white-hot. it's a strange sensation, the silence where the lighter flick-hiss should go, like missing a step going downstairs, your memory trying to close the loop and fill in the gap. your knees are aching where they're bent up to your chest, your jeans too tight and stiff like you've slept in them. he's been telling you a story but slowly his voice fades out, rough and quiet, and he just sits and slides a smoke from your pack and into his own mouth, smirking with his eyes. his buzzcut's growing out patchy and uneven and you reach over and rub it, like soft velcro, and he grins at you from under his eyelashes, strangely intimate. like a pin-up girl in his oversized shirt and doll-eyes, cigarette tucked next to his lip ring before he takes it between his fingers and exhales with his mouth pink-red. you can see him breaking your heart if you let him. you can close your eyes and ask the mother in all Her beauty if your rhythm guitarist is falling in love with you and She replies in abstract shapes, in shadows of memories of feelings, in the strings of fate tangled up until they resemble something twisted and broken. you ask Her who will take care of your little brother after you've drank yourself to death and She is silent.</p><p>frank's rubbing the pad of his thumb under the pointed edge of your fang and you mean to warn him about your venom but he pricks his finger and lets you taste it before he melts it down, seals the wound. you think if you doused michaelangelo's david is gasoline and lit him on fire he'd resemble frank strikingly.)</p><p>(<em> the pain is not bodily, but spiritual- though the body has its share in it.  </em></p><p>it does, the body aches, the body whines and sinks its teeth into frank's neck and hears him whisper 'i've got you, i've got you,' ash-crackling, <em> it is a caressing of a love so sweet which now takes place between the soul and- </em>)</p><p>(frank is crying, vhs static in the air, cigarette dangling from his fingers while he swipes at his eyes and mutters, his voice rough and wet, 'i think- i think i'm in love with him.'</p><p>you're stroking his hair and he's shaking, he's worn-thin and exhausted, and you're saying 'he loves you,' and you're saying 'c'mere,' and it isn't your voice, it isn't your voice or your arms or your shoulder that frank's sniffling into-)</p><p>mikey lets go of the string. </p><p>'oh,' he says quietly.</p><p>he wakes up in his bunk. it's dark, suffocating dark, like a weighted blanket to the brain. like a fog in the heart, like a knife in the heart, like-</p><p>he needs a cigarette.</p><p>the sway of the bus is comforting and familiar and makes mikey feel like a ship in fog, the carpathia on a love-struck voyage in the atlantic night. fuck. </p><p>someone's left a pack of newports out on the coffee table and mikey gets halfway through one and less than that through sorting himself out, feeling person-like again, when ray walks out in his pajamas and lights a smoke of his own.</p><p>'g'morning,' he says, gives him a wry little grin; 'can't sleep?'</p><p>'nope.' </p><p>'mm.' ray takes a drag, and fixes mikey with a strangely sympathetic look, like he's x-rayed mikey's heart and knows something's changed. 'what're you thinking about?'</p><p>'the rms carpathia<em> , </em>' mikey says, and the scratchiness of his own voice surprises him. </p><p>ray raises his eyebrows but it's warm, it's a <em> go-on </em>, and mikey reaches forward to flick into the ashtray and says, 'it was the ship that responded to the titanic's distress call.'</p><p>mikey slips into unconsciousness again, like a sheet dragged over the face of a corpse, lights-out, and he knows he sleeps longer than he should. he wakes up on the couch to smell of hot coffee and fresh cigarettes, foreign stillness- there’s a light slanting through the window that strikes mikey as west-coastal, makes him homesick even though if you asked him where they are he wouldn’t have a clue. the tour starts and ends in jersey- that’s all he has to keep track of, gerard’s the poor shit who has to convince the crowd he knows where he is. </p><p>frank, across the table, says, ‘g’morning,’ and it’s obviously supposed to be sarcastic, but it rings so true and sweet that mikey’s face burns and he dips his head to fiddle in his pocket for his cigarettes. </p><p>‘where is everybody?’</p><p>'the store or somethin'. we're out of-' he waves his hand aimlessly, suggestion of inconsequential loss. something missing but it'll always come back, there'll always be a corner store and there'll always be money in their pockets. smoke comes off his fingernails in black-gray and mikey stares. mikey's seeing him in parts, bloody cuticles and stubbled jaw and the folds of his shirt, digestible in pieces, the dropped cigarette that can start a forest fire if mikey isn't careful.</p><p>'here,' frank says, and he leans forward to light mikey's smoke, and with a little feline curl of his mouth he kisses the end, with the red of his lips. the cherry sparks into being and mikey pulls a breath in, something delicate and profane about it. something tender and vulgar like sex.</p><p>controlled burns. mikey smokes and frank lets him stare and mikey thinks about driptorches, about the maintenance of forests stretching out for miles in the countryside burning slow and even in the night, about the rebirth of it. </p><p>'did you lose your glasses?'</p><p>mikey reaches up on instinct, like maybe if he wants them hard enough his glasses will be there but he touches the bare bridge of his nose like an idiot and says, 'huh.'</p><p>he hasn't been wearing them- he Knows it, as soon as he wonders, it's been a day, but even before that he didn't quite need them, did he? just- old habit. </p><p>''cause of the ceaseless watcher, i guess. i was- i wanted to get lasik, anyway.' he finds his mouth with his smoking hand.</p><p>'you look good,' frank says, and mikey Sees himself third-person, something off, something static-sizzling and inhuman; it would've scared him, once. to be without anything to hide behind.</p><p>'so do you,' mikey says and he hopes frank knows he means the parts of his skin that are molten and malleable, the parts of him that glow orange-red in the night. the carpathia was too far away to be obligated to respond to that distress call. it took them three hours to make it, three hours with no power, no hot water, no reason to believe they would make it in time.</p><p>mikey crushes his filter in the ashtray and watches frank's hands, the flint-spark of his nails. <em> i love you </em> they say. <em> i love you. </em>there's no reason for it. mikey has the strangest urge to pick up the butt where it still smokes and press it to his tongue. </p><p>the carpathia took on 705 survivors. </p><p>'i love you,' mikey says and it's rough on his throat, it sits wrong on his tongue but it needs to be said, he knows it, because it's true. fuck, it's the only thing mikey can even know for certain, really, it's the only thing in his body that makes sense, it's in his blood and he wants to run an iv between them, vein-to-vein, so he doesn't have to hear his own voice echo in his ears. </p><p>
  <em> you're terrifying. you're beautiful. i love you. </em>
</p><p>frank reaches over, palm-up, like an offering, and mikey takes his hand, his skin hot to boiling, and mikey holds onto him. </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>the brainrot i have .... immeasurable.</p><p>*slaps the body horror tag* this bad boy can fit so much trans coding</p><p>summary/title is from the killing moon by echo and the bunnymen</p></blockquote></div></div>
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